My very intelligent neighbors are lighting fireworks on a storm sewer surrounded by dry grass and straw when it hasn't rained in three weeks.
I make it rain and then write about it. 📡 Weather reporter, author, aspiring flâneur. Bad opinions are all mine. He/him. 🏳️🌈 📍N.C. || http://www.damweather.com/p/the-skies-above.html
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My very intelligent neighbors are lighting fireworks on a storm sewer surrounded by dry grass and straw when it hasn't rained in three weeks.
This one is all nature's doing.
I own the world's longest selfie stick!
Some personal news: today was my Friday.
Bay Area! I used to pass through Charlotte all the time flying back and forth for college. My only issue is that I remember how small it felt for the number of people it serves.
Loving the cloud pattern outlining the Great Lakes this afternoon.
Today is the 10th anniversary of one of my top-five most fascinating storms—Hurricane Fred. It was the first hurricane on record to hit Cabo Verde. It was so rare that the NHC's software physically couldn't display a hurricane warning for the country on the map. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrica...
Connecting through Charlotte. Pray for me.
It's just sinking in that I get to fly over the entire country and see it with my own eyes. The Mississippi River. The flatness of the Plains. The Rockies. A lifetime of watching satellite and radar and seeing other people's pictures, and I'll finally see it for myself. Albeit from 34,000 feet.
I just booked my first-ever solo trip to see a friend in California and I'm very nervous and excited about it. It'll be my first trip anywhere in nine years, to boot. 🥳
Wow I've been using my weather blogs wrong for YEARS.
I have a meeting at 2:00pm and my computer decides to do this at 1:56pm. Technology!
And then it sprouts legs like Inspector Gadget.
Crazy to live in a moment when literal millions of people are waiting for it to happen like a surprise Times Square ball drop.
This government is Dale Gribbles all the way down.
Eggs ran me three greenbacks from my last cheque.
Beautiful hook echo and likely TDS over France half an hour ago
Lego is no longer sending individual pieces to the U.S. due to Trump ending the de minimis exemption. This man ruins everything. www.404media.co/lego-stops-s...
Shutdowns are bad—full stop—for the simple reason that they force millions of essential workers go without pay. It's just bad strategy, to boot. The sociopaths running Congress wouldn't feel pressured at all by services shutting down and public servants going without pay. They'd relish it.
Lately I regret learning how to read.
A rare spot of good news:
I am a Sheetz fan for life. Their crispy chicken ranch wraps have a hold on me.
Unfortunately for us, the game is Oregon Trail and we're all getting dysentery.
I forgot to take my antidepressant 18 hours ago and I'm *already* having brain zaps because of it. How melodramatic.
Walmart's radioactive shrimp hatched from these eggs that expired two months ago.
Vaccines save lives. I'm the biggest fainty needlephobe you'll ever meet and I'll be first in line to get my COVID and flu shots this fall. It'll cost me almost $200 without insurance, but it's absolutely worth every penny.
MerserCo is our chemical manufacturing subsidiary.
We value your experience here at DennisCo.
Cancelling the next PAR R&D phase is nonsensical. PAR technology is our best candidate to replace our aging fleet of WSR-88Ds. Weather radar is one of the most lifesaving and highest-ROI technologies our gov’t has ever supported. Scrapping next gen radar is pound-foolish w/o the penny-wise part.
It never gets old scrolling up on my own articles in Google Discover. 🥳
Time to escape.
The genuine happiness so many people have shown for Taylor Swift today is a nice change from literally everything.
Thank you for posting this! I'd worried it was just me and went searching just to be sure.
"Oh, the Supreme Court will stop him." They haven't yet. The one limit SCOTUS put on him was explicitly not to touch the Federal Reserve Board, and he's trying it anyway! Checks and balances have to be enforceable and most aren't right now. He believes he has no limits and he's acting accordingly.
It's time for the people who pretend to be "not interested in politics" to become interested in politics pretty damn fast. We're going to a very ugly place very quickly. This isn't just a joke.
Have a blurry photo of Air Force Two doing touch-and-goes in Greensboro this morning.
The first week back to school is magical because I get the stores and parks all to myself.
71°F with no humidity. Absolutely gorgeous. There's nothing like the first cool day after a long, hot summer.
How your email finds me during the latest constitutional crisis.
Plenty of reporters proved to us during Trump 1 that they're willing to sit on news for years until they score a book deal.
It's pretty cool to watch sea surface temperatures cool off in Hurricane Erin's wake. www.damweather.com/2025/08/watc...
I grew up in Virginia. We had the best flag for a reason. #SicSemperTyrannis
Today's the first day of school for lots of districts across North Carolina. Here's a refresher on the rules around stopping for school buses. I had to look it up last night myself as a reminder for how it works on divided highways.
I'd love to visit, but their political landscape is too similar to the U.S. for my comfort.
Life happens and not every "never" is never. These are my "I won the lottery, what next?" choices. I'd be fine living in a more populated part of N.C. than where I am now. I miss northern Virginia. I feel like I'd be happy in NJ/NY/MA. My ultimate wish is to call Canada home one day.
Long term goals. #ElbowsUp
My brain all day: "🎶 radioactive shrimp from Walmart 🎶"
Don’t be afraid to share your writing. There are six Sharknado movies.
Alright, I've got the goods. Whose campaign wants to get in on this?
Here's flyin' over you, kid.
Living next to a rubble pile might devalue your home. phys.org/news/2025-08...
Today's the 14th anniversary of the 5.8 Virginia earthquake, which cracked the Washington Monument and was felt as far away as Quebec. I moved back to Mobile for fall semester and missed it by a week. I was SO bummed.
People hate gerrymandering, even when it's a tit-for-tat effort to save what's left of our representative democracy. California could very easily screw this up—they voted in favor of "forced prison labor" just last year!
The NASA Artemis is the dream. The typewriter is my forever regret not getting it before it retired.
I'm on my way to get two Lego sets.
I call 2016+ the "deconstruction era" on my website. We're speeding through a reversal of the social and civic progress we've made in the past century. wxdam.com/elections/pr...
I popped into Twitter on my work account to look for something and that place is unrecognizable compared to when I stopped using it last year.
That burst of thunderstorms around Erin's center might be the storm's last gasp before it completes extratropical transition.
a troop-involved outing
The NYT editors are meeting every day, workshopping a passive voice phrase for Martial Law
The SPC has no areas of severe weather in the forecast tomorrow. If that holds through tomorrow, it'll be the first time we've seen no severe risk on the map since April 13.
Yessss. Finally caught a flight going to Haiti in Sky Cards. It was easier to find one going to Greenland.
Wild that people here spread endless lies that Biden abandoned WNC, but nobody here cares now that Trump actually did abandon them.
I'm usually good at sniffing out "what's really behind this tantrum" but I'm at a loss to understand the Cracker Barrel meltdown. Are they really just being babies about a company changing its logo?
Yesssss, thank you! Just sent a request.
Could someone please take their gyrocopter up for a spin so I can complete one of today's missions in Sky Cards.
American leader D. J. Trump announced Thursday he would tour the nation's capital after heavy fortification of the city by regime forces. International observers note that the crackdown, conducted under false pretenses, bears close resemblance to those seen in other illiberal democracies.
Not the point but I'm kinda diggin that phone background in the stock photo. Anyone know where I could find it?
Made this little guy to track the substantial growth of Erin's tropical-storm-force winds #mapshaper #turfjs #flubber #svelte5 🎁 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
🌝
Everything feels very "opening paragraph of a dramatic chapter in the textbook" lately.
Social media is so cooked. My public Facebook page has 4.4k followers and it's so heavily throttled that my last post only got 82 views. Not clicks, not likes—just views. Can't wait for an 83rd person to see my Hurricane Erin post in four weeks.
Hurricanes can translate their energy into intensity and size. One is usually at the expense of the other. Great example:
My library renews your account every three years and mine was up last month. I've gotten Denis, Denise, Debbis, Dentist, and Doyle, but getting my entire government name wrong while holding my license in your hand is a new one. They fixed it today and we had a good laugh over it.
No pockets, but it shreds a mean cheddar.
What steers a hurricane across the Atlantic? I joined Saphia for an episode of The Breakdown to talk about how Bermuda Highs and thunderstorms help determine the ultimate track of a storm. www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5ix...
Here's a look at Hurricane Erin's wind swath since August 11, and its forecast wind radii through August 24.
What really fascinates me about hurricanes isn't just that they can rapidly intensify, but that they can wilt like orchids at the slightest inconvenience.
The Christmas song "do you hear what I hear?" is about nuclear war.
Erin's hurricane force winds currently extend 80 miles from the center of the eye, while tropical storm force winds extend 230 miles from the center. Look how much more the storm is forecast to grow this week:
Hurricane Erin is a large hurricane that's getting larger. Tropical storm and storm surge watches are in effect for N.C.'s Outer Banks as the storm brushes the region by midweek. www.damweather.com/2025/08/watc...
It's just six hissing possums on 14th Street.
They paid a consulting agency for something less creative than DAMWeather and I came up with that at 2:30 in the morning.
Hurricane Erin is noticeably larger this evening than it was this time yesterday evening. 5:00 p.m. Saturday —TS Force Winds: 160 mi. from the center —Hurricane Force Winds: 30 mi. 5:00 p.m. Sunday —TS Force Winds: 205 mi. —Hurricane Force Winds: 50 mi.
Just your everyday tornado warning in central British Columbia.
Off the top of my head, Beryl last year was the season's first hurricane. Andrew in 1992 was also the first hurricane (in late August, no less!).
I dove into some of the stats behind Hurricane Erin's rise to Category 5 today.
1-minute #GOES19/#GOESEast Visible images revealed mesovortices within the eye of Category 5 Hurricane #Erin.
If you play Sky Cards and have a "Catch Anywhere" to use, go catch the Hurricane Hunters flying into Erin!
NHC says Erin may be starting an eyewall replacement cycle. I wrote about ERCs last year and how they contribute to a storm growing in size, as Erin is expected to do. www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/scie...
Same vibe.
Right? I thought there were 60 of them until I went back to look. (There have been 60 F5/EF-5s, I think that's what my brain went to.)
"Hey cuties! 🌪️" is my new email greeting.
Some hurricanes like Erin are able to rapidly intensify at an astonishing rate, jumping from a Category 1 to a Category 5 in a matter of hours.
Hurricane intensity can influence track for sure, but the ridge to its east (and an eventual trough over New England) are pretty well guiding its path at this point.
Hurricane Erin is the Atlantic Ocean's 43rd category five hurricane since records began in 1851. It's the basin's 5th category five since 2022, and the 11th since 2016. wxdam.com/weather/cate...
This is a remarkable image from the NOAA-P3 #Hurricane Hunters in #Erin. You can actually see the wind speed gradient by the color of the ocean as you go from extreme #eyewall winds to the relative calm of the #eye. Incredible images & data from @noaa.gov @nws.noaa.gov
Early dinner, Matlock, in bed before sunset. Don't hate a routine.
Was it always to this extent, though? Seems like "75 at bedtime, 145 the next morning" didn't happen as much before the past decade.